Financial Times, 23 April 1990, by B.A. Young
Lady Windermere's Fan; Theatre Royal, Bristol
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Wilde liked to keep an important item of his plot tucked 
away, so that it would make a better effect when he chose to 
reveal it. In this production, one element of what is, after 
all, a well-known text is transposed to an earlier point in 
the play in order to give a more convincing quality to what 
is going on - the revelation that Mrs Erlynne is Lady 
Windermere's mother. 

This is let slip, quite casually, in Act 2 instead of being 
saved for Act 4, and it adds extra credibility to Lord 
Windermere's insistence that 'I dare not tell her who this 
woman is.' 

Lady Windermere is convinced, by the time she has heard of 
Mrs Erlynne's behaviour in Lord Darlington's rooms, that Mrs 
Erlynne is 'a very good woman,' and indeed the play is 
subtitled *A Good Woman*. 

Maggie Steed rightly plays her as a woman trying to conquer 
the touch of vulgarity she has picked up in her fast life. 
But there is a maternal quality that she is able to switch 
on, and she will make a decent wife for Alan Bennion's 
decent Lord Augustus. 

Joely Richardson, tall and stately, keeps Lady Windermere's 
emotions at bay. She is as cold in anger as she is in 
affection, though the truth is that she is given little 
opportunity to radiate more than gratitude. Secretly I felt 
that she would have been better off with Anthony Head's 
courteous Darlington than with Ian Price's rather grumpy 
Windermere. 

Among the plethora of witty aristocrats that throng the 
Windermeres' rather under-decorated drawing-room, Jenny 
Lee's handsome Duchess of Berwick might age into Lady 
Bracknell, though she has a good deal of ageing before her 
yet. She is unkind to wish her daughter (Jane Annesley) on 
to such an exaggeratedly common Australian as Anderson 
Knight's Hopper. 

The wit doesn't sound as witty today as it must have sounded 
in 1892, but this is a circumstance, not a fault, and Robert 
Carsen's staging provides a galaxy of wealthy folk in 
wealthy costumes, who look as if they are being witty out of 
earshot. This production is nothing if not generous. 

Anthony Ward's designs for Carlton House Terrace are lofty 
and handsome, but parsimonious in furniture, lighting and 
ornament. Darlington's rooms are walled in with a dark 
curtain all round, which lifts effectively at the conclusion 
of the act to reveal the Windermere morning-room underneath. 



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